Subscribe

December 05, 2014

The objection that pro-life advocates or organizations aren’t really pro-life because they don’t also advocate [fill in the blank] is one you’ll encounter. Scott Klusendorf responds to this "single issue objection" in The Case for Life:

How does it follow that because pro-life advocates oppose the unjust killing of innocent human beings, they must therefore take personal responsibility for solving all of life’s ills?

Speaking at a pro-life convention in Alberta, a local cleric chastised pro-lifers for focusing too narrowly on abortion when they ought to consider broader “life issues” such as occupational safety, AIDS, poverty, and capital punishment. The result, the cleric said, is a “fractured Christian witness that hurts the cause.”

The cleric is typical of many on the political left who insist that because pro-life advocates oppose the willful destruction of an innocent human being, they must therefore assume responsibility for society’s other ills. In other words, you are not truly pro-life unless you treat the deforestation of the Amazon with the same moral intensity that you do the unjust killing of a human fetus. This is careless thinking and highly unfair to those who take abortion seriously.

Imagine the gall of saying to the Canadian Cancer Society, “You have no right to focus on curing cancer unless you also work to cure AIDS, heart disease, and diabetes.” Or try telling the American Heart Association, “You cannot reasonably oppose cardiac arrest unless you fund research aimed at stopping all loss of life.” Ridiculous indeed, but how is this any different from what the cleric told pro-life advocates?

Consider what he is demanding. Local pro-life groups must take their already scarce resources and spread them even thinner fighting every social injustice imaginable. This would be suicide for those opposed to abortion As Frederick the Great once allegedly said, “He who attacks everywhere attacks nowhere.” ...

Given a choice, I’d rather pro-lifers focus on at least one great moral issue than waste their precious resources trying to fix all of them.

I think part of what’s behind this objection is ignorance. There are many people who are unaware of the multitude of local, national, and international ministries out there addressing crisis pregnancies, single mothers, poverty, prison issues, human trafficking, disaster relief, religious freedom, education for the poor, etc., etc., etc. No one person can, or should, be intensely involved in all of them at the same time. This is why we have the body of Christ. The eye does his job, the ear does his job, and both are needed. (If you ask the person expressing this objection to measure his own life and causes according to his “you must give equal time to every issue” standard, he might more quickly see your point.)

And ultimately, for many people who make this kind of objection, no amount of service on the part of a pro-lifer will be enough, as illustrated by this classic interaction a caller had with Greg.

November 14, 2014

When a person’s mind conflicts with his body, which should we help him to change? While speaking at the ERLC National Conference last month, Denny Burk said:

At the heart of the transgender revolution is the notion that psychological identity trumps bodily identity. In this way of thinking, a person is whatever they think themselves to be. If a girl perceives herself to be a boy, then she is one even if her biology says otherwise.

But as Burk explains, our society takes the opposite view when it comes to “Body Integrity Identity Disorder”:

Fox News did an anonymous interview in 2009 with a person named “John” who has been consumed with feelings of dissatisfaction with his body for as long as he can remember. Ever since he was a child, he has felt like a one-legged man trapped inside a two-legged man’s body. He has suffered psychological angst his entire life because of his two legs. Even as an adult after 47 years of marriage, he still wishes and hopes to have one of his legs amputated….

It turns out that “John” has a condition that pychiatrists call “Body Integrity Identity Disorder.” According to a 2012 study, the only known treatment that provides psychological relief is amputation. Nevertheless, doctors have by and large resisted this, and people suffering from this disorder typically cannot find doctors willing to do the surgery unless they injure themselves….

We consider it wrong to amputate healthy limbs—it’s considered a mutilation of the body, out of bounds for respectable doctors, even if the would-be amputee desires it.

Burk then makes the obvious connection to those who desire sex-reassignment surgery:

If that is the case with amputations, then what are we to make of the woman who claims that she is a man trapped inside a woman’s body? …

The ethical question that we have to ask is the same one that we have already asked. Is it right for people to amputate otherwise healthy limbs? Is the problem here damaged limbs or a damaged mind? Does the body need adjusting, or does the thinking? …

Over the last few years, we have seen a number of reports about parents who are letting gender-confused children undergo hormone therapy to delay puberty indefinitely until a decision can be made about gender reassignment surgery (see here). Ironically, these parents believe that it is permissible to surgically alter a child’s body to match his sense of self but it is wrong to try and change his sense of self to match his body. Yet this leads to an obvious question. If it is wrong to attempt to change a child’s gender identity (because it is fixed and meddling with it is harmful), then why is it morally acceptable to alter something as fixed as a biological body of a minor? The moral inconsistency here is plain. To this we must also observe that the vast majority of children who report transgender feelings grow out of those feelings. I would argue that it is irresponsible and wrong to physically alter a child’s body through surgery or hormones when we know that most of these children grow out of their gender-conflicted feelings (source).

Why, only when it comes to gender disorders, do we accept the idea that the body must be changed to fit the mind? As with those who have Body Integrity Identity Disorder, shouldn’t we rather do what we can to help the suffering person adjust his gender identity to fit his body? Shouldn’t responsible doctors likewise refuse to amputate their healthy body parts?

As it turns out, even if it weren’t problematic for doctors to agree to these surgeries, we may not be doing people any favors by removing their healthy body parts at their request. I’ve posted before about “Why the First Hospital to Do Sex-Reassignment Surgeries No Longer Does Them,” and this week Stella Morabito compiled a number of stories of people who greatly regretted their surgeries here. The stories are tragic.

We ought to have a great deal of compassion for those who have gender disorders. As with those who suffer from Body Integrity Identity Disorder, we may not be able to provide relief through changing their minds. But that doesn’t mean we should assume relief would be provided through mutilating their bodies.

November 06, 2014

Brittany literally became the cover girl for doctor-assisted suicide when she went public with her decision and was on the cover of People magazine. She was diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor and chose to end her life at her own timing rather than die of the disease. This is called death with dignity.

There has been criticism for those who have publicly disagreed with her decision. But Brittany went public in order to spark a change in public policy, so it’s in the public square for discussion.

“Death with dignity” is a phrase that suicide proponents have used. Of course, there’s rhetorical power to the phrase to identify it with suicide, bypassing the difficulty and suffering of dying naturally. But dignity has nothing to do with the mode of death, but the way someone handles dying. There’s nothing at all undignified about needing the care of others when we can no longer care for ourselves. There’s nothing undignified about a difficult death. Dignity is a virtue of how the person handles the very difficult circumstances they find themselves in.

I’ve become more personally acquainted with suffering and dying. For the last year my mother’s heart conditions have worsened. She’s become incapacitated and needs care for virtually every need she has. She’s bedridden and her memory is worsening. It’s nothing very unusual for someone nearly 90. She’s slowly dying. It’s very difficult for her and there have been times she’s yearned for it to end. But my mother has accepted every degradation in her condition with grace. She’ll die of natural causes. She is dying with dignity.

My mother often says she never imagined she’d be like this. She would rather die than linger like this. I can’t imagine how hard it is to be in her situation. And I know there are families dealing with much, much worse.

It isn’t pointless.

There’s a community aspect to anyone’s death. Each person’s death and how we handle it either communicates the intrinsic value of human life or the lack of it. It speaks of our value for those virtues or says they’re unimportant. It tells everyone that life is precious and not ours to take, or it says that we are our gods and personal autonomy is paramount.

Brittany Maynard went public because she wanted her death to tell us what she thought about suffering and dying. We need to think carefully about what she told us because it has consequences for all of us and how we treat the suffering and dying, the very vulnerable. My mom’s dying process also tells us something. And I hope that it teaches us that we aren’t the masters of our fate. That life is precious and valuable even when it’s extremely difficult and painful. That we need to care for the sick and dying with patience and compassion. And that there is dignity in the way we accept dying by natural means even when it’s very, very hard. In caring for the sick and dying, we affirm the value of every person by treating them humanely through sickness until death.

Obviously, there are worldview issues involved in this. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, the virtues gained during the end of life aren’t very valuable. If you don’t believe that we are God’s creatures and He gives us life and value, then we are the masters to exercise autonomy over our fate. The value – or lack of it – we put on life at the worst moments in life and death will have consequences for how we treat people at any point in life. This will have consequences for how we as a society provide for the suffering and dying. It will have consequences for the kind of people we are.

October 21, 2014

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:22-24).

I love the intellectual life. I love the reading, the studying, the debating, the discussions, the ideas. I love all of it. But looming in the shadows are the various threats it poses to the fruit of God’s Spirit in my life:

In regard to love, it threatens my ability to love others whom I have intellectual disagreements with and whose ideas I find dangerous.

In regard to joy, it threatens to subtly remove joy from my life as it often requires a critical and skeptical eye toward ideas, which can lead to negativity.

In regard to peace, it threatens the peace I ought to live in with other believers even when I disagree. Indeed, I’ve had heated discussions that broke fellowship with my brothers in Christ for some period of time.

In regard to patience, it threatens my ability to be gracious and understanding as I interact with those who have difficulty seeing and affirming the truth. Specifically, I have to be very attentive to this with my own family.

In regard to kindness, it threatens my ability to be charitable to the ideas of others.

In regard to goodness, it threatens the priority I place on practicing spiritual disciplines and cultivating virtue, as I feel the continual pull to bury my head in books.

In regard to faithfulness, it threatens my faithfulness to God himself, as I give more attention to man’s written word than God’s written Word.

In regard to gentleness, it threatens the way I interact with non-Christians as I strive against the urge to persuade using only the “resistless force of logic.”

In regard to self-control, it threatens the priorities I must have in place as I battle for balance between the intellectual life and God, family, church, and other priorities.

As we continue to cultivate an intellectual love for God, let us be on constant watch for these potential pitfalls, and let us attend to our own virtue and life in the Spirit with as much emphasis and passion as our intellectual life.

1. Avoid asking kids to line up as boys or girls or separating them by gender. Instead, use things like "odd and even birth date," or "Which would you choose: skateboards or bikes/milk or juice/dogs or cats/summer or winter/talking or listening.” Invite students to come up with choices themselves. Consider using tools like the "appointment schedule" to form pairs or groups. Always ask yourself, "Will this configuration create a gendered space?"

That alone is interesting and odd. If you’re not going to divide the class into boys and girls, why would you continue to divide the children into two separate lines? The reason they’re being divided up in the first place is that they’re different in a way that’s relevant to getting little kids to stand quietly in line—and they’re two kinds of different. Of course, the teachers could continue to artificially divide them into two lines by irrelevant categories, but it’s not going to accomplish the good that dividing them by gender—the relevant category—used to accomplish. You don’t avoid cooties by separating kids according to their preference for summer or winter, so what’s the point? It’s odd to me that the people who came up with these suggestions didn’t just recommend teachers stop dividing the children into separate lines. (They probably will eventually, but one step at a time.)

This is exactly the kind of inconsistent thinking being expressed by many same-sex marriage advocates (with, I predict, the same eventual outcome of dropping the number two). They’re insisting we ought to hold on to two-person marriage while at the same time removing the reason for defining it as two people in the first place. When “male” and “female” are deemed irrelevant, the number two is no longer in play. At that point, if you insist on “two,” you’re just prolonging a meaningless habit, and how long will that last?

2. Don't use phrases such as “boys & girls,” “you guys,” “ladies and gentlemen," and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention. Instead say things like “calling all readers,” or “hey campers” or “could all of the athletes come here." Create classroom names and then ask all of the “purple penguins” to meet at the rug.

A lot is being made of this “purple penguins” designation in the media, but in fairness, the guidelines are not asking teachers to call kids “purple penguins,” they’re asking teachers to divide the classroom into groups and give those groups special names. “Purple penguins” is just one example of a name they could use, and using it would be no different from dividing students into groups and referring to them as “Bruins” and “Trojans.” It’s only the fact that the group names are supposed to be used as a way to avoid “boys and girls” that turns this into craziness.

5. When you find it necessary to reference gender, say “Boy, girl, both or neither.” When asked why, use this as a teachable moment. Emphasize to students that your classroom recognizes and celebrates the gender diversity of all students.

6. Point out and inquire when you hear others referencing gender in a binary manner. Ask things like, “Hmmm. That is interesting. Can you say more about that?” or “What makes you say that? I think of it a little differently.” Provide counter-narratives that challenge students to think more expansively about their notions of gender.

There has to be a better way to show compassion to the few children who suffer from gender confusion that doesn’t involve destroying a healthy understanding for all the children of the reality that the world is divided into boys and girls who are different from each other. It’s also hard for me to believe that little kids will go along with this. They’re still quite aware of who the boys are and who the girls are, and they tend to care.

You can read more about this situation in the Lincoln Journal Star. Here’s an extraordinary quote at the end of the article:

“Our purpose is to educate all kids," [Student Services Director Russ] Uhing said. "We do not push a political agenda, we don’t push a religious preference on people, or a sexual preference on people. That’s not what our role is.

It sounds like Uhing is making the common mistake of thinking the worldview he’s promoting is neutral just because he doesn’t attach a political or religious label to it. But of course, there is noneutral view. He is promoting an aspect of a particular worldview. Erasing the distinction between boys and girls is anything but neutral. It teaches children what to think about the meaning of male and female—the most basic aspect of ourselves, telling them that gender is meaningless, something we create for ourselves and use however we like, not something given to us for a purpose we ought to submit to. This understanding of gender has numerous cultural, philosophical, theological, and yes, even political implications. Whether he realizes it or not, the view Uhing is advocating does play a part in advancing a particular political agenda, which is precisely why I predicted we would see more of it.

The fallout from the destruction and redefinition of marriage spreads still more widely, even beyond the immediate territory of the family. Deep friendship between members of the same sex is now in grave danger. To show us why, Esolen asks us to imagine a world in which the incest taboo is erased (and that is a world that may not be far off). In such a place, “You see a father hugging his teenage daughter as she leaves the car to go to school. The possibility flashes before your mind. The language has changed, and the individual can do nothing about it.”

So too, in the world that is rapidly embracing and recognizing homosexual relationships as normal and normative, the space for deep and meaningful male-male or female-female friendships among the young is rapidly shrinking to the vanishing point. “The stigma against sodomy,” Esolen rightly notes, “cleared away ample space for an emotionally powerful friendship that did not involve sexual intercourse, exactly as the stigma against incest allows for the physical and emotional freedom of a family.”

Add, then, the estrangement of boys from boys and girls from girls, in a world in which intimacy always raises the suspicion of sexual desire. This is a bleak horizon to contemplate: plenty of sex, mostly empty and unrewarding, with much less love and friendship.

I’ve already seen a change happening in interpretations of friendships, most recently in the discussion over Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s friendship with Eberhard Bethge, and it’s upsetting to me that people might shy away from close friendships for this reason. Here’s what Trevin Wax had to say about the “assumption [that] affectionate male friendships must be romantic in nature”:

History is replete with examples of robust male friendships that are full of affection and expressions of love and yet are not sexual.

Unfortunately, the sexual revolution has made it more difficult to imagine passionate philos apart from eros. That’s why revisionist historians read romantic notions into Teddy Roosevelt’s affectionate letters to his closest friends. People wonder out loud about Abraham Lincoln’s sharing a bed with his friend, Joshua Speed. It’s hard for our society to understand how King David could weep so terribly over the lost love of Jonathan unless there was some sort of romance between them. And now, Bonhoeffer’s relationship with Bethge is put under the microscope of 21st century assumptions.

In fairness to the biographer, it is certainly possible that Bonhoeffer was attracted to Bethge, even though acting on such a notion was always out of the question. But it’s also possible, even likely, that Bonhoeffer’s friendship was, like many male friendships of the time, strong and affectionate, with a passion that did not include sexual desire.

The speculation about Bonhoeffer’s sexuality distracts us from the greater loss of slowly disappearing same-sex friendships, the kind of love we see in literature between Sam and Frodo, relationships that many today can hardly conceive of, apart from some sort of sexual longing.

This is just one unintended consequence of the sexual revolution and subsequent redefinition of marriage, the most basic and foundational institution in our society. There will be many more. You can’t rip the foundation out of a house and then not expect every room to be affected in some way.